TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

Holy smokes do I have a lot of reading to do. All of the biggest movies of 2016 are comic book films, from Valentine's Day's Deadpool , to March's Batman v. Superman and the summer's Captain America: Civil War . 2016 looks like an incredible year for the movies, but don't be afraid to get nostalgic about the year that's passed us! For someone who champions original filming, I can't believe two sequels rest in my top five list (and maybe a comic book movie is sneakily hiding somewhere in this post). Being in college ate up most of my time this year, but I was still able to watch 22 candidates for my top spot, including Mission: Impossible 5 , Kingsman , Ant-Man and Crimson Peak . All (mostly action) movies I really enjoyed but couldn't find a place for. Maybe in a weaker year. Since I'm anal about only counting movies released in 2015 that I saw from 1/1/15-12/31/15, movies I missed like Room , Anomalisa , The Hateful Eight , The Revenant and the one ...

Movies rarely hit as close to home as Me and Earl and the Dying Girl did for me. This summer alone I'll have written/directed/acted in a movie for the tiny "production company" my friends and I have been building and working on for years. Though we don't put in the almost Pixar-worthy effort characters Greg and Earl seem to, employing stop-motion animation and Star Wars -esque miniatures to get the job done, I certainly relate to the passion they put into their parodies, such as 2:48 Cowboy instead of Midnight Cowboy . Book to film adaptations always get nerds nervous, unless you're Shrek, Lord of the Rings or To Kill a Mockingbird , but that's a short list. It's great when young adult authors can make the jump from page to silver screen themselves, as Stephen Chbosky did, directing/adapting his Perks of Being a Wallflower to huge success three years ago. Jesse Andrews was able to adapt his novel, and it's been reported he and director Alfonso Gomez-...